LEAVING INDIA

 With 8 pages of 37 black & white photographs

Author :  Minal Hajratwala

Publisher : Tranquebar Press, year 2009, pages 429

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Excerpts :

1. In a rented portion of a wooden building at the corner of Renwick Road and Ellery street, in the main business section of town, Motiram began his new life as an entrepreneur. A hitching post stood just out front for customers’ horses; nearby were the post office, banks and white-owned businesses. A few yards away ran a creek, and on its far side Chinese and Indian shops crowded together in congested alleyways.Down the street was the shop started by another Khatri, the one in whose footsteps Motiram had followed.

2. The kathaa of the Narseys business, of which Ranchhod’s tale was but a small piece, had been mostly a success story despite the death of its founder, Motiram, in 1918. Motiram’s brothers had run M.Narsey & Company ably. They opened a grocery section briefly, then closed it to focus on the growing demand for their tailoring skills.

  3. Iowa in winter was a frozen sea. Bhupendra taught Bhanu to cross the glacier step by step, from their graduate student barracks to town or to the Quad, pressing her new rubber boots, fortified with two or three pairs of socks, against the slippery ice. They both fell, again and again. They had no money for a whole winter wardrobe of Western clothes; she pulled a thin sari around her, and a jacket over that.

4. The first Gujaratis to penetrate the motel game started out in San Francisco in the 1950’s. As a port city, it had a constant flow of travelers as well as a steady supply of long-term hotel residents, men with drinking or other problems who never quite got it together to manage a place of their own. A handful of Indians realised the benefits of managing, leasing, and eventually owning such motels.

5. In campus towns in New Zealand and Iowa, our brown skin had been exotic, too rare to be a threat. If our previous neighbours had had no sense of a Race Problem, suburban Detroiters were all too aware of it. Eight years old, I touched down in an electrified pond, all ions already polarised.

6. Hemesh left Hong Kong for a year to study business in London, then returned to the family firm, which he called “the best school for business.” He began making sales trip to Fizi with suitcases full of samples. Then after Fizi’s 1987 coups and the resulting economic decline, all of the “Hong Kong walas” as the Khatris in Hong Kong called themselves, were forced to look foe other markets.

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My Take :

          A book that vividly paints the fascinating history of indentured labourers sent from India to Fizi and other countries. How they established themselves, flourished and gradually their subsequent generations spread out to USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and more.

            The author has successfully given just sufficient details of the persons involved, their struggles, determination and hard work, the country they settled in, to keep you reading late into the night.

            An excellent book for your library.

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Subject type :  Life stories of Immigrants through several generations

Narrative Style :  Keeps you spell bound

Readability :  Excellent

Reader’s Interest : Excellently maintained

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